Journey to the Ancient Near East with lunch at St John’s College

Thank you to Paul Collins, curator of the Ancient Near East for a fascinating tour of the Ancient Near East gallery on Saturday. We got an insight into some of the choices and challenges curators are faced with when planning new galleries and heard some hidden stories about ancient objects on display. Paul told us about an object he had chosen to take out from storage and display- a fragment of a decorative wall made of small clay cones with coloured ends. This object revealed the roles of many different people in its manufacture and construction and started us thinking about the lives of the people who might have made it and built it. Thank you Paul for a thought provoking tour.

It’s a challenge to create resources which different teachers and students can use to explore galleries when they come on a self guided visit. Today the CREATIVES gave feedback about resources which are in the process of being developed for the Greek and Roman galleries for secondary schools. Everyone had plenty of ideas and suggestions for improvements all of which will feed into the final design- thanks team!

A highlight of the term was lunch at St John’s College. We all tucked in to the great selection of food on offer, caught some organ music in the chapel and enjoyed the sunshine in the quad.

Thank you to Ruth and Katherine, access officers at St John’s, for having us!